Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 574: The Cubs’ Unparallelled Prospects

Episode Date: November 14, 2014

Ben and Sam talk to BP prospect staffers Nick J. Faleris and Chris Mellen about the Cubs’ top-ranked farm system.

Bought myself a farm, way out in the country. Bought myself a farm, way out in the country. Spent time in the hayloft with the mice and the bunnies. Spent time in the country. Yes, it's good, living on the farm. All so good, living on the farm. You know it's so good, living on the farm. Good morning and welcome to episode 574 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from BaseballPerspectives.com brought to you by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com.

I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of Grantland.com. Hi, Ben. Hello. Ben Lindberg of grantland.com. Hi, Ben. Hello. And one thing we like to do every year is when the top tens are coming out for each team, when the top ten for the presumed best organization in the game comes out,

we like to talk to the authors who put that list together. And I don't know for sure that this is going to end up being the best organization, but I think it's our best guess at the moment, or it might be. The Cubs top 10 is out this morning, Friday morning. And so we have Nick Valeris and Chris Mellon, who are leading the top 10 rankings this offseason, doing incredible work, and finally have reached the Cubs. Hi, Nick. Hi, Chris.

How are you guys? All right. How's it going? Doing well. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. Say which one of you is which. This is Nick.

This is Chris. All right. There we go. Okay. Are we like some crazy satellite phone system that's causing this delay, or are we just that slow because we're worn down from the rankings? I think that the call, I think that when I say something, it goes through Ben's Skype, which then goes through Chris's phone, which then goes to you.

So it's like a three delay. All right. Uh... I'm just exhausted too, Nick, to be honest with you. All right. delay. I'm just exhausted too, Nick, to be honest with you. First off, you guys think the Cubs might be the number one organization when we do org rankings

at the end of the winter. You don't obviously know that, but I guess how confident are you that this organization stands above the rest? I'd say I'm pretty confident are you that this organization stands above the rest? I'd say I'm pretty confident. The sheer depth of the system and the fact that they've got two likely top five overall prospects in Bryant and Russell and then two or three others that you might be able to fit fit into the top 50 or or 75 or so that's that's pretty tough to compete with no one else really jumps out to me as having

uh that balance of depth and impact yeah i'd agree i'd agree with nick if you just look at the overall future potential of the the first few guys in this system the system has more than we've released to date so far in all the other systems combined. We have two players with a seven-type future of all-star potential fall back on first division regulars there, and then two players right below them in Jorge Soler and Albert Amora who could push that type of level in terms of the ceiling just in the first four players alone. So this is, as Nick said, a very deep system. It's very talented.

It's got a high ceiling at the front. It's got a high ceiling in the bottom. It's definitely a big system here. So this was either the top system last year or maybe number two behind the Twins, and it's still up at the top. Now, obviously, they've graduated some guys, Baez and Alcantara, but they've also added Russell. Is this a better number one Cubs system than last year's possibly number one Cubs system? For me, yes, definitely. cub system i for me yes definitely i think uh the influx of of arms in the draft this year

uh schwarber coming on board via the draft this year and some of the growth with uh you know in younger kids kids at the lower level such as glaber torres um really has boosted the overall strength of the system uh there wasn't a lot of regression from impact guys in the system. And then you have guys like Underwood who had nice rebound years and look to have set themselves back on track as far as development is concerned. So it was a little shaky early on in the summer. was a little shaky earlier on in this in the summer uh some of the some of the guys uh you know almore for example uh struggled a lot in the early months but the ship righted and i think for the most part everyone in the system finished pretty strongly it was a really good year for

them developmentally and uh before we uh we'll talk a lot more about the cubs but uh just curious what happened to the twins uh since last year that they would sort of fall out of that spot? Well, you know, it's tough. It's tough with the box spin injury, him being the frontliner of that system and also the frontliner of the top 101 in the game. It's tough to evaluate him, to be honest with you. We haven't gotten deep into the Tw twin system, yet we will soon. But just what happened with him, it's tough to say that.

It's tough to ding a guy for some of the injuries he had. They were kind of a little bit, I don't want to say fluky, but at the same time, he didn't make any development strides forward, and it's going to be interesting to know how we handle that. And then you had Sano up at the front there with him, Miguel Sano as well, who went down with the shoulder injury and missed the whole season. And again, he was another player towards the top 20 last year

who, again, for that system, did not really do anything on the field developmentally to push it forward. You had players like Jose Barrios and Cole Stewart come in and take some steps forward to help kind of bolster it. But you also had some players in that top 10 that we had last year, like an Eddie Rosario, who were more middling over the course of the season. I saw him a bunch. He was a top 100 guy for us last year as well.

I think he was seventh overall in that system, so you can see the depth there. If you're seventh guy and you've got seven guys in the top 100, that's a pretty deep system. He was uneven over the course of the season. Scout had been Scout well. I know he performed well in the Arizona Fall League, but that's kind of an iffy profile right now.

When you look at the mix of players there, it's still a strong system on talent and potential. But, you know, as Nick said, with the Cubs, a lot of players taking steps forwards or finishing the season strong. With the Twins, it was a little bit of the opposite. The interesting thing about the Twins, I'm really looking forward to digging into that system, which we'll be doing in the next probably week and a half or so, is a lot of the talent that they brought in recently has been skewed towards a power reliever profile. So they added three or four arms in the draft this year that have the potential to impact late-inning arms

in pretty short order, and it's not a traditional sort of um you know sexy top prospect but it did add some some some girth to the system and then obviously we've got guys like alex meyer jose barrios um lewis thorpe a lower level arm that had a solid year in the midwest league and and nick gordon is probably probably the next in line in that system as far as someone who could step up and eventually grow into sort of that elite terror prospect. So there's still a lot of talent in the system. It's going to be an interesting system to pick apart and figure how everything sort of slots together. My guess is that they're not going to have a huge fall off, even with the injuries that Mellon mentioned to Buxton and Sano.

You mentioned that Russell is a potential number one overall prospect in the game right now. Just a couple months ago, when the site did the midseason, top 50 Russell was number six, and only one of the guys above him graduated to the majors. Did he do something in the second half after the trade to change what you guys thought of him to really elevate? Or is it more a matter of injuries, digging the guys above him, and just sort of, I don't know, maybe just him being in that mix to begin with? Yeah, I mean, I think generally speaking, there wasn't tons separating that top collection of players on the midseason BP top 50 list. Russell definitely had a strong second half.

Part of this is the process of taking a look at what transpired over the full season and the aggregate. And when you start stacking everything up and you break down the grades and you break down the production, I mean, you've got a shortstop here that's a potential five-tool guy, probably the most balanced out of any of the profiles for the handful of impact shortstops in the minor leagues right now. And he's had a very successful year, very productive year as a 20-year-old in AA. I mean, it's tough to beat that resume.

I mean, he's definitely the type of player who can stick up the middle and provide a ton of value for you on the field. He's got a higher floor. If the hit tool doesn't quite get to the level that we think it's going to get to, if the power doesn't quite play to the level we think it's going to get to, it's still a pretty damn good player here. Nick and I are talking and looking through this system and whatnot with Russell at the front and then potentially having him in competition

for one of the top prospects in the game. We think it's totally warranted. Debate and discussion has been a big part of producing these lists for the last few years. It's always been someone and prospect staff. And there's a big prospect staff and not everyone agrees on every player. So you mentioned that Russell and Brian are probably both top five guys. How close were they? Were you guys split on how to order them or were other members of the

prospect staff split on that? Was there a lot of pro Bryant number one voices in the, in the discussion? Yeah. So the way that the, uh, the process has worked, you know, Mellon and I are each responsible, uh, as the point person for, for half of the teams, uh, the Cubs are half of the teams. The Cubs are one of the teams that fell into my coverage area. So I had the privilege and the responsibility to turn the lists,

to make the final decision as far as where I thought players should slot in, to cross-check with industry sources. And for the bulk of the process, Bryant was slotted into the number one slot, just, you know, almost by default, I think. And as I was digging into the actual reports themselves and writing them up, you know, I just sort of challenged myself with, you know, put Russell at one, see how it feels, you know, write, write them up that way. And, um, you know, the, the more The more I wrote, the clearer the narrative became to me that I prefer that profile overall to Bryant's profile.

And Bryant's profile is fantastic. As I said, it's a top-five profile on the prospect scene without question. But the added defensive value, the wider array of potential impact tools, as Mellon touched on, gives a firmer set of foundational value. I think it allows for Russell to be a productive player if the development rounds out in any number of different avenues so if he were to to to get bigger get stronger than you know evaluators currently expect and ends up having to slide over to third base what's likely to come with that is a boost in the power grade and you know he's going to be an impact player there just as easily as he is at shortstop so i'd say the prospect team for the most part was was locked in at brian and number one but when i uh came back and it was after we had basically settled the list, I came back about a week later and said, hey, here are some changes I'm making.

And there wasn't really much pushback at all. I kind of laid out my reason for the changes. And, Mel, unless you remember something different, I think for the most part it was met with interest but not really a lot of challenge. Right. met with interest but not not really a lot of challenge right and I will say that in the beginning even even as you were outlining this and everything that you had offered to the group you know right off the bat you know what what we thought about you know Russell being up at the front it was something that always kind of seemed in your in your mind Nick and I think just when like

when I've done the other list and sat down and wrote these guys up you take take a step back, you take all the information that we've gotten from our team, from industry sources, just kind of internally in your individual mind and kind of think about it. And sometimes you just make those tweaks at the last second where you flip a guy or you move a guy around because you've just been able to consolidate all the information and kind of step back and look at the profile yeah that's right when when we first rolled out the list for discussion and i had players kind of tiered and then we we examined comparatively those players within those tiers you know one of the questions i think you're right mel that i i put forth at the very beginning was you know it seems like there's an argument for Russell over Brian. Does anybody want to make that argument? And there really wasn't anyone lining up to make that argument.

No one came out and said, yeah, I think we should consider Russell number one. I think everyone was comfortable with Brian at number one, but they're so close and the profiles are so close that when we ultimately decided to make the switch, it was met with, I think, positively on the whole. And both of these guys have 2015 ETAs on the list. Obviously, a lot of people were hoping they'd get a chance to see Bryant last year, but the Cubs took a more conservative approach. So we saw top prospects come up last year. We saw Alcantara, we saw Baez, and they had some growing pains as expected

do you think that will be the same sort of thing that we see with Russell or Bryant or do you expect these guys to come up and hit right away sort of like Solaire did last year Solaire is an interesting uh interesting data point um you know I to answer the question I think Russell has a better skill set, a skill set better suited to step in and make a smoother transition to the big leagues. His approach is a little bit tighter. His natural bat to ball is a little bit better simply because the swing is geared to contact. It's a more compact swing than

bryant swing he's obviously he obviously doesn't have the same long levers that that bryant has so he has fewer coverage holes in the strike zone and and that in and of itself uh simplifies things where bryant has the potential to run into some issues and this was touched on in his write-up on the on the rankings um major league arms are going to be able to do a better job of exploiting some of the holes in his swing. And those are just natural holes that come with being a big guy and having long arms and a big wingspan there and big leverage in your swing.

So he's going to have to continue to work, and he's done a great job of it thus far in his trek up the minors, of learning to work counts, fight off pitches when need be, and really finding his pitches to drive. And he is a good natural hitter. He's going to make hard contact. But there is sort of that natural swing and miss to his game that, you know, he probably has a larger risk of running into issues with Major League Armors being able to exploit those holes.

So Soler is a good example of that as well. He came up and sort of played out of his mind for five games or so and then actually had a pretty pedestrian rest of the way. The book got out, or the preliminary book at least. Not enough information yet, I guess, to get a full book. But pitchers adjusted, and Solaire didn't really adjust back yet. So we'll see how he enters the season next year. But pitchers stopped challenging him inside, pitched him away, softer away more often, and he struggled a fair amount in his last 20 games or so.

So, you know, I think Bryant is, it won't struggle as much as Solaire did, but he's probably more likely to run into some issues than Russell would be. It seems like I hear Kyle Schwarber, I feel like I hear his name come up in the exact same context every couple days, which is like this. name come up in the exact same context uh every couple days which is like this somebody will ask a question in a chat or in a comment um about how insanely good he is and then whoever the expert is inevitably walks that guy back a little bit and makes some caveat about uh his bat being too advanced for his level or something like that uh how good is Schwarber? I guess you mentioned tiers when you were creating this.

Is he in a tier below Almora? Yeah, I think he was in the second tier, and Almora was in the first tier when we first broke these out. Almora is an impact up the middle player that has the potential to grow into plus power. There's plus raw there already. He's going to impact the game across the field. He's going to be an impact base runner.

He's a smart base runner. He can take an extra base. He's not going to make outs on the bases. He's going to provide plus defense in center field, and he's going to hit. You know, Schwarber is much more one-dimensional. He's got the ability to hit for average. He has good plate coverage, a really sound approach, a really mature approach, and he's got that plus or better raw pop that's going to play as well. So he's going to be a useful bat, regardless of where he slots. But if he's not a catcher, and the odds are he's not a 100-game-a-year catcher,

you know, you're going to have a below-average defender in left field or at first base, maybe a 50-game-a-year catcher, and a pretty good bat, you know, a bat that can be a number five or number six bat in your lineup. But that's a clear step behind sort of Al Morris' ceiling, which is, you know, a number one, number two bat in the order that's going to step behind sort of Al Morris' ceiling, which is a number one, number two, bad in the order that's going to hit for average, hit for power, and oh, by the way, give you big value on the defensive side of things and on the bases.

Forgive me for forcing a cough, especially because I'm completely knowledgeable about any of this stuff, but when I look at him and I look at his, what he's done statistically and kind of what his profile is offensively and defensively, I sort of feel like I'm seeing Derek Barton at the same age. Is there anything to that at all? Or is this just me being completely non-knowledgeable? I'm assuming that you're, we're going back to Schwarber. Yeah. Okay.

I was gonna say Barton wouldn't be my comp for Amora. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, there are similarities there offensively. You know, the key for Schwarber is really going to be how much is the power going to play in game and, you know, where is that value ultimately going to come defensively. And, you know, Barton makes sense comp-wise there. You have, you know know a bad first profile and as far as whether or not Schwarber is able to you know ever transcend sort of that first division regular and and grow into a legit all-star type profile you're really counting on

something extra happening. So either he makes so much progress behind the base, behind the plate, and he has the work ethic and the makeup to surprise and outperform sort of expectations. Now, you could see him developing into that sort of elite type of talent, but it's going to take something outside of,

you know, the general projection at this point. I think to take something outside of you know the general projection at this point i think if you spoke to you know midwest scouts that had him in their coverage area if you spoke to decision makers uh you know scouting directors that that had him on their draft board and if you probably if you spoke to folks in the cub system they'd all tell you he's a really great player i'd love to have him in my system. But this isn't really a profile that you would traditionally build your team around. He's not the staple of the lineup. He's going to be a really important piece, provided that the Cubs have a spot for him and that he fits into what they're ultimately doing.

But this isn't the piece that they're building their team around. He's a good, you know, in the long run, if you step back and look at him, he'd be a good complementary piece on a contender, on a deeper team, a guy that if you have a lot of other good to great major leaguers on the team, you can afford to maybe have a player like him play first base and not bring a ton of defensive value to the table because you have a guy like Russell or a guy like Almora out in center field who have the potential to provide good defense along with good offensive ability.

It all really depends on the composition of the team. On a team that's maybe thinner in talent, and then you put him in a position where you're trying to force him to be a full-fledged, consistent contributor and bat somewhere in that middle of the lineup. No, I don't think so. When we write these guys up, a lot of times we try to outline where they would hit. He's, like Nick said, I think a guy who could hit fifth, sixth, even seventh in a deeper lineup and contribute, contribute offensively, but he did not have a ton of pressure on him to have to go out there and perform at such a value that it's going to put pressure on both sides of this game. Even though this system might graduate its top two guys this year, there's always the potential that they might trade some guys at some point over the offseason or during the season. And yet you say that there is enough lower level talent even that this could continue to be the strongest system or one of the strongest systems next year.

of the strongest systems next year. So who are, I guess, the highest projected risers or who would be the guys that we will be talking about as the top in the system next year? Or I guess who are the interesting names that have just recently been added to the system and are still a ways away? So the best place to start there is Gliber Torres, who made the top 10 this year. You know, he has the feel at the plate to make a big developmental jump early on, despite

being so young. You know, he's the type of profile that could grow into an impact profile, you know, step in and sort of be the next in line behind an Addison Russell type. His tools aren't as loud as Russell's were at the same age, but he's not that far behind. He could be an impact profile in the near future. The three on the rise candidates we mentioned, Steele, Stinnett, I'm sorry, and Zagunas ended up taking that third spot, and we can touch on him in a second, but Steele and Stinnett are two arms that could take a big step forward, join Carson Sands, who made the top 10, and be fixtures in this top 10 moving forward, all of them having mid-rotation, upside, and good fallbacks in the back of a bullpen.

I think Sands is the best bet to stick in a rotation among those three. But Stinnett and Steele have the big stuff to be laid in, and guys at their worst, provided they're able to stay healthy. And then Dwayne Underwood took a big step this forward. He just missed the top ten. He just missed the on the rise. He was a premium talent in the draft. He had sort of a rough go at his first taste of pro ball.

And this year he sort of righted the ship. And, you know, compared to how he had looked previously in pro ball it was a big developmental year for him um take putting into context of where he was when when he started and and what the expectations were it's probably more accurate to say that he's sort of back on track and um ready to to move forward he's the type of profile that could, you know, next year with another strong year, be another, you know, potential number three starter. And, and when you start lining up all of these names, you say, wow, you know, let's say Bryant, Russell, Solaire, all drop off this list.

We could have, you know, three or four arms that are on par with, you know, Pierce Johnson is the top arm on this list, you know, at this time next year, and a bunch of them are still going to be in the low minors. Um, you know, that's, uh, it, there's a lot, there's a lot of talent in the system. There's a lot of high ceiling talent that's sort of on the cusp of establishing itself as a legitimate prospect that's making steady progress. There just aren't a lot of systems that can boast that.

So that's how I got comfortable making the statement that the Cubs could potentially promote and or trade some talent, and there's enough there, enough upside there that they could know, you could be a number one, they could legit be a number one, the number one system in baseball this year and fall no lower than, you know, four or five, despite losing two top five prospects in the game. That's, that's, that's a pretty crazy amount of depth. So it, it's, it seems that there are like maybe three different routes that you can take to being the number one organization in baseball one is you get a bunch of you know first or second overall picks one is that you trade everybody on your major league roster for a bunch of prospects and the third is that you're just

genuinely are really good at the drafting and development side of things and you turn uh guys into you know even better guys you turn them into better than people thought they would be you you bring out their best uh potential so there's a little bit of each of the first two with the Cubs. How much of this ranking is related to their actual organizational ability, which I guess is a way of saying how sustainable is this once this crop of prospects is all promoted? How sustainable is the system that they have? How good will they be, would you guess, in five years? Well, I'm definitely curious to hear Mellon's thoughts on this because I know that I've

been so deep in the Cubs system for the last three or four weeks that I'm probably guilty of drinking the Kool-Aid a little bit. I'm probably guilty of drinking the Kool-Aid a little bit, but I'm highly impressed with their developmental focus on their players, their approach to finding strengths in a player's profile and helping to draw those strengths out. And regardless of whether that was uh the direction they intended that player to head uh you know when they acquired when they acquired him it's similar to what the cardinals do the cardinals do a great job of you know identifying profiles they can work with and

then let that player develop into whatever form of that player is going to be the most useful and they find the slot for him or they move him i mean mean, that's very much what I see with the Cubs. You know, if it turns out that Schwarber isn't going to stick behind home plate, you know, the Cubs aren't going to keep him there just because they feel they need that bat and they want it behind the plate. If he's going to be a more impactful player in left field, that's where they're going to end up shifting him. And they'll figure out whether it makes the most sense to hold on to them

or find someone else who will pay something in trade for that asset. It's a well-run ship. They have a plan from scouting side through acquisition and through the orientation process, getting players comfortable in the pro game and then starting to push them forward. And we'll see it with the difference in, my guess is, the difference in the way that they approach developing Stenette, Sands, and Steele. Three of the top arms they drafted this year are going to be on fairly differing developmental tracks.

And Stinnett's a college guy. You'd expect it to be slightly different. But the Cubs are going to find the best fit from a comfort perspective and put these players in the best position to progress. And I guess Torres and Eloy Jimenez as well, two Latin American players that debuted in the AZL. You could very easily see one of them get challenged with full season ball next year and the other spend more time

out west in the Northwest League, despite both of them having fairly solid stateside debuts. I'd say that based on the staff that they have in Chicago, namely Theo Epstein and Jason McLeod, I have deep experience with how they operate when they were over in Boston. It's typically, they kind of have done the same exact thing they did with Boston in terms of establishing a ton of talent within the system. It's a war of attrition. I think that they aren't afraid to take chances on players,

to give players big money and not have those players pan out. That's one of the things that you have to do in developing players is that you just get talent into your system, and inevitably ones are going to burn out, and they're not going to make burn out and they're not going to make it and you're not going to hit you're probably going to hit less you know less than you think less than you do you're going to have guys burn out and whatnot but a little bit differently what they did you know what they did at first over in boston was they let a lot of free agents go and

they stacked up um you know compensation type picks and first round picks there and were able to draft a ton of talent into the system and let it percolate through. Here over in Chicago, given that the expectations were a little bit lower, the team's rebuilding. I know the fan base is rabid and wants to win, but there was a little bit more leeway in putting up 90-plus loss seasons than there were in their other tenure. You know, you've got to win every year, or they want you out.

And what they've been able to do is draft pretty well, trade players off and build up the farm system. And they're kind of pretty much in a similar situation where they have a ton of talent. And I don't know if it's, you know, in terms of developing, I think sometimes, I think some organizations, you know, they have philosophies and they look at players and they try to go through a certain kind of philosophy.

But one of the things I've learned just through my experience is that there's not the same plan for every player. Each player is like a unique case study. They're individual. You have to approach them differently. I think teams that are progressive like that and are able to look at players and realize that I can't make every player want to be super disciplined at the plate. I have to let players play to their strengths and try to mitigate their weaknesses.

So I think that Nick's been drinking the Kool-Aid over there for the last couple weeks. But for someone who's been around these guys often and seen what they've done before, this is pretty much a similar outcome. And I think it's definitely a trend that you go from one organization to the other and you've kind of established your development machine in the same exact way. Do you guys know who the 30th best org is going to be? It might be, my guess would be the Angels. Oh, yeah.

But that would be the Angels. Oh, yeah. But that would be my guess. I talked to one scout who had Instructs coverage, and he said he turned in – I don't want to be hyperbolic, so I'll be a little bit more – a little bit kinder than I think he said he only turned in six players as future major leaguers which is uh a pretty rough go at it for a collection of young talent that you normally see at instructs um they they lost uh additional players to san diego via trade this year uh there's there's not tons in that system that that's going to be a rough one to break down. Fortunately, I think it's the last or second to last one I have to do. So I think by that point I can either mail it in or I will have been fired from this job anyway. So last year Jason said that the Twins organization

would be better than the Angels organization, even if you took out the twins top 10 uh how far how deep could you go how many cubs could you promote tomorrow and still have their system be better than the angels would you guess i think you well you could definitely go 10 yeah you know i'm thinking 12 13 probably yeah maybe probably maybe around 12 or 12 or 13. Let's see. You have – jeez. I wish I had this question ahead of time. I would have had a better answer in a lot shorter time span.

I guess you could say, would Carson Sands be the number one prospect in the Angels system? Start with that 10th guy right there. Yeah, my guess is that we'll have Sean Newcomb number one in the Angel system. That was their first rounder this year. I don't know that Sands beats out Newcomb for that number one slot, but looking at the next five or six guys after that, it's going to be fairly heavy 2014 draft class, I'd say, probably in the top five or six for the Angels.

And, you know, the Cubs won't – the Cubs have a little bit more depth at the upper level. I mean, you have guys that weren't in the top ten like C.J. Edwards, Arati Viscaino. You know, there's some legit close to major league talent in the cub system that that wasn't in the top 10 and we touched on like dwayne underwood obviously the on the rise guys for the cubs you know all of those guys are easy you know easily better than you know the names that i expect will be sliding into the top you know five or so for the angels so yeah mel i think

you're probably right you're probably 12 or 13 13 deep and you still have a good chance, I think, of making a pretty comparable collection of talent up the good work. And we will, I'm sure, have you on again once you're done with this process. Once the top 101 is out, we can talk about that. But thank you for joining us. Yeah, thanks a lot, guys. All right. And everyone can follow Nick on Twitter at Nick J. Filaris. You can follow Chris on Twitter at Chris Mellon. They are always happy

to answer prospect questions on there too. And I will add a link to the top 10 in the Facebook group. I will not add a link to the top 10 in the BP blog post because if you're looking at the BP blog post, you will already be at baseballperspectives.com. So that is the last show for this week. We hope that you will join that Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. Send us some emails for next week's show at podcast at baseball perspectives.com. Rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes and support our sponsor by going to baseball reference.com. sponsor by going to baseballreference.com, subscribing to the Play Index using the coupon code BP, and getting the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. Have a wonderful weekend.

We will be back on Monday.